LLLEO/1

Macalister/1949, 138: `The slab is first recorded in the Llanstephan MS. of Lhuyd's Parochialia as being upright in the churchyard of the parish (called in the MS. Llan Lhywenvel) with another stone opposite to it 8ft. away. It appears to have been still standing in the churchyard so late as 1924, but since then it has been moved to the church'.

Macalister/1949, 138: `On the sinister edge there was a succession of three crosses potent: the topmost cross is scaled away, and the lowermost is now concealed by an iron stay supporting the slab, but the cast in Cardiff Museum shews all three'.

640 - 660 (Thomas/1998)Thomas/1998, 157, identifies Ruallaun as Riuallaun king of Brycheiniog in the seventh century, and attested in later genealogies.

Language:

Latin (rbook)

Ling. Notes:

Macalister/1949, 138: `a couplet of leonine hexameters...For the suffixed Q, as an abbreviation for que compare PATRIEQ on the similar inscription at Cynwyl Gaeo'.

Nash-Williams/1950, 77: `The phrase In sindone occurs in the Book of Kells. The formula iudicii adventum tremendum is of fairly common occurrence on 5th- and 6th-century tombstones in Italy. The inscription is an example of a metrical epitaph, a type represented again on a monument of Group I at Cynwyl Gaeo (Carm. - No. 139)'.

Also see now Thomas/1999, for extensive commentary on this inscription.

Palaeography:

Macalister/1949, 138: `five lines of mixed capitals and half-uncials of peculiar form...The above is what I made of it in a careful examination of the original, when I had the advantage of the collaboration of Col. Sir John Lloyd, Director of Brecon Museum. Others have read the opening word SINDONE MUTI; and I was obliged to admit to myself, when, later, I examined the cast of the stone in Cardiff Museum, that this reading could not be ruled out altogether, though the stone itself never suggested itself to me. But the expression is so unusual that it looks improbable; and that involves an abandonment of the caesural rhyme, a fault far more serious than the crop of false quantities presumed by reading sindo~ne~'.